Man accused of stalking 15-year-old neighbor

Friday

Aug 16, 2013 at 7:27 AM

By Dennis PelhamDaily Telegram Staff Writer

A 45-year-old Clinton Township man was arraigned Thursday on a felony charge of stalking a neighboring family’s teenage daughter. The bond for Kent Ellsworth Losee was raised to $500,000 after a prosecutor reported police found evidence he was preparing to leave and possibly take a victim with him.

Losee asked to object to the bond increase during his arraignment by video in Lenawee County District Court.

The higher bond is appropriate due to a risk to society and risk that Losee might flee, said magistrate Lisa Beazley in granting the prosecutor’s request. She told Losee his attorney may request a hearing on bond.

Losee is accused of harassing behavior toward the 15-year-old girl in violation of a personal protection order issued last fall that prohibits contact with her and her family.

The order was sought by the girl’s parents after Losee reportedly told the mother on Sept. 29 that he is in love with the girl. Losee told the mother he understood she was only 14 then, but he would give her time to grow up.

“I can’t tell you how crazy, weird, creepy it was,” the mother wrote in the petition for a protection order.

The order was amended in June to prohibit posting messages on the Internet after police reported Losee had posted “perverted and threatening things on YouTube.”

Michigan State Police are still conducting an active investigation in the case, said Monroe post commander Lt. Tony Cuevas. He is not able to comment on the results of the investigation at this time, he said.

Assistant Lenawee County Prosecutor Angie Borders said during Losee’s arraignment that a lower bond was set before police conducted a search of his home Wednesday night. The search yielded information, she said, indicating “the defendant was in the process of preparing to leave the area and that he may have been considering taking a victim with him.”

Prosecutor Burke Castleberry said it was decided a higher bond “was necessary, in our opinion, to protect society and to prevent a flight risk.”

Losee’s wife also sought a restraining order when she left him in April with their 9-year-old daughter, claiming “bizarre and scary” behavior that reached a peak in the past year with an obsession for the neighbors’ 14-year-old daughter.

In her petition, Melissa Losee stated her husband “continues to be obsessed with the neighboring child, and has carved two bears from logs with a chainsaw and placed them facing each other ... in imitation of the minor child’s Facebook logo to demonstrate his belief they will be together in the future.”

She also claimed he made a large wooden heart trimmed with white lace and inscribed with the words, “be mine,” and that he made a large heart in the snow on their front lawn, which faces the girl’s home.

Her husband, she stated, “fails to recognize or accept that the neighbor’s minor child is afraid of him and wants nothing to do with him.”

Losee’s first attorney in the divorce case objected to a restraining order. He said it was “wholly untrue” that he fails to accept his attention for the girl is unwanted and had apologized to her parents after revealing his feelings.

In his response to his wife’s petition, Kent Losee claimed she suffers from paranoid delusions and denied having any violent intentions.

A preliminary hearing on the felony charges was scheduled for Aug. 26.